By F. B. Sanborn

The Atlantic Monthly, May 1892 

Thoreau Reader: Home - Emerson in Europe - The Dial Period

    We were all very glad to have such cordial greetings from you as in your last letter, on the Dial’s and on all personal accounts. Hawthorne and Channing are both in good health and spirits, and the last always a good companion for me, who am hard to suit, I suppose. Giles Waldo has established himself with me by his good sense. I fancy from your notices that he is more than you have seen. I think that neither he nor W. A. Tappan will be exhausted in one interview. My wife is at Plymouth to recruit her wasted strength, but left word with me to acknowledge and heartily thank you for your last letter to her. Edith and Ellen are in high health; and, as pussy has this afternoon nearly killed a young oriole, Edie tells all corners, with great energy, her one story, “Birdy — sick.” Mrs. Brown, who just left the house, desires kindest remembrances to you, whom “she misses and whom “she thinks of.” 

    In this fine weather we look very bright and green in yard and garden, though this sun, without showers, will perchance spoil our potatoes. Our clover grew well on your patch between the dikes; and Reuben Brown adjudged that Cyrus Warren should pay fourteen dollars this year for my grass. Last year he paid eight dollars. All your grafts of this year have lived and done well. The apple-trees and plums speak of you in every wind. 

    You will have read and heard the sad news to the little village of Lincoln of Stearns Wheeler’s death. Such an overthrow to the hopes of his parents made me think more of them than of the loss the community will suffer in his kindness, diligence, and ingenuous mind. The papers have contained ample notices of his life and death. I saw Charles Newcomb the other day at Brook Farm, and he expressed his great gratification in your translations, and said that he had been minded to write you and ask of you to translate in like manner — Pindar. I advised him by all means to do so. But he seemed to think he had discharged his conscience. But it was a very good request. It would be a fine thing to be done, since Pindar has no adequate translation, — no English equal to his fame. Do look at the book with that in your mind, while Charles is mending his pen. I will soon send you word respecting the Winter Walk. 

Ellery Channing works and writes as usual at his cottage, to which Captain Moore has added a neat slat fence and gate. His wife as yet has no more than five scholars, but will have more presently. Hawthorne has returned from a visit to the seashore in good spirits. Elizabeth Hoar is still absent since Evarts’s marriage.(11) You will have heard of our Wyman Trial and the stir it made in the village. But the Cliff and Walden, which know something of the railroad, knew nothing of that; not a leaf nodded; not a pebble fell. Why should I speak of it to you? Now the humanity of the town suffers with the poor Irish, who receives but sixty, or even fifty cents, for working from dark till dark, with a strain and a following up that reminds one of negro-driving. Peter Hutchinson told me he had never seen men perform so much; he should never think it hard again if an employer should keep him at work till after sundown. But what can be done for their relief as long as new applicants for the same labor are coming in every day? These of course reduce the wages to the sum that will suffice a bachelor to live, and must drive out the men with families. The work goes on very fast. The mole which crosses the land of Jonas Potter and Mr. Stow, from Ephraim Wheeler’s high land to the depot, is eighteen feet high, and goes on two rods every day. A few days ago a new contract was completed, — from the terminus of the old contract to Fitchburg, — the whole to be built before October, 1844; so that you see our fate is sealed. I have not yet advertised my house for sale, nor engaged my passage to Berkshire; have even suffered George Bradford to plan a residence with me next spring, and at this very day am talking with Mr. Britton of building a cottage in my triangle for Mrs. Brown; but I can easily foresee that some inconveniences may arise from the road, when open, that shall drive me from my rest. 

    I mean to send the Winter’s Walk to the printer to-morrow for the Dial. I had some hesitation about it, notwithstanding its faithful observation and its fine sketches of the pickerel-fisher and of the woodchopper, on account of mannerism, an old charge of mine, — as if, by attention, one could get the trick of the rhetoric; for example, to call a cold place sultry, a solitude public, a wilderness domestic (a favorite word), and in the woods to insult over cities, whilst the woods, again, are dignified by comparing them to cities, armies, etc. By pretty free omissions, however, I have removed my principal objections. I ought to say that Ellery Channing admired the piece loudly and long, and only stipulated for the omission of Douglas and one copy of verses on the Smoke. For the rest, we go on with the Youth of the Poet and Painter and with extracts from the Jamaica Voyage, and Lane has sent me A Day with the Shakers. Poetry have I very little. Have you no Greek translations ready for me? 

    I beg you to tell my brother William that the review of Channing’s poems, in the Democratic Review, has been interpolated with sentences and extracts, to make it long, by the editor, and I acknowledge, as far as I remember, little beyond the first page. And now that I have departed so far from my indolence as to write this letter, I have yet to add to mine the affectionate greetings of my wife and my mother. 

    I doubt if you have made more corrections in my manuscript than I should have done ere this, though they may be better; but I am glad you have taken any pains with it. I have not prepared any translations for the Dial, supposing there would be no room, though it is the only place for them. 

    I have been seeing men during these days, and trying experiments upon trees; have inserted three or four hundred buds (quite a Buddhist, one might say). Books I have access to through your brother and Mr. Mackean, and have read a good deal. Quarles’s Divine Poems as well as Emblems are quite a discovery.    I am very sorry Mrs. Emerson is so sick. Remember me to her and to your mother. I like to think of your living on the banks of the Mill-brook, in the midst of the garden with all its weeds; for what are botanical distinctions at this distance?  Your friend, 

    I see that I was very blind to send you my manuscript in such a state; but I have a good second sight, at least. I could still shake it in the wind to some advantage, if it would hold together. There are some sad mistakes in the printing. It is a little unfortunate that the Ethnical Scriptures should hold out so well, though it does really hold out. The Bible ought not to be very large. Is it not singular that, while the religious world is gradually picking to pieces its old testaments, here are some coming slowly after, on the seashore, picking up the durable relics of perhaps older books, and putting them together again? 

    Your Letter to Contributors is excellent, and hits the nail on the head. It will taste sour to their palates at first, no doubt, but it will bear a sweet fruit at last. I like the poetry, especially the Autumn verses. They ring true. Though I am quite weather-beaten with poetry, having weathered so many epics of late. The Sweep Ho! sounds well this way. But I have a good deal of fault to find with your Ode to Beauty. The tune is altogether unworthy of the thoughts. You slope too quickly to the rhyme, as if that trick had better be performed as soon as possible, or as if you stood over the line with a hatchet, and chopped off the verses as they came out, some short and some long. But give us a long reel, and we’ll cut it up to suit ourselves. It sounds like parody. “Thee knew I of old,” “Remediless thirst,” are some of those stereotyped lines. I am frequently reminded, I believe, of Jane Taylor’s Philosopher’s Scales, and how the world 

        “Flew out with a bounce,” 

which 

        “Yerked the philosopher out of his cell;” 

or else of 

       “From the climes of the sun all war-worn and weary.” 

I had rather have the thought come ushered with a flourish of oaths and curses. Yet I love your poetry as I do little else that is near and recent, especially when you get fairly round the end of the line, and are not thrown back upon the rocks. To read the lecture on The Comic is as good as to be in our town meeting or Lyceum once more. 

    I am glad that the Concord farmers ploughed well this year; it promises that something will be done these summers. But I am suspicious of that Brittonner, who advertises so many cords of good oak, chestnut, and maple wood for sale. Good! ay, good for what? And there shall not be left a stone upon a stone. But no matter, — let them hack away. The sturdy Irish arms that do the work are of more worth than oak or maple. Methinks I could look with equanimity upon a long street of Irish cabins, and pigs and children reveling in the genial Concord dirt; and I should still find my Walden wood and Fair Haven in their tanned and happy faces.

    I write this in the cornfield — it being washing-day — with the inkstand Elizabeth Hoar gave me;(12) though it is not redolent of cornstalks, I fear. Let me not be forgotten by Channing and Hawthorne, nor our grey - suited neighbor under the hill [Edmund Hosmer]. 

         “Love drinks at thy banquet 
          Remediless thirst,” 

we now have the perfect phrase, 

        “Love drinks at thy fountain 
          False waters of thirst.” 

    The Comic is also Emerson’s. There is a poem, The Sail, by William Tappan, so often named in these letters, and a sonnet by Charles A. Dana, now of the New York Sun. 

    In Concord no events. We have had the new Hazlitt’s Montaigne, which contained the Journey into Italy, — new to me, — and the narrative of the death of the renowned friend Étienne de la Boëtie. Then I have had Saadi’s Gulistân, Ross’s translation, and Marot, and Roman de la Rose, and Robert of Gloucester’s rhymed Chronicle. 

    Where are my translations of Pindar for the Dial? Fail not to send me something good and strong. They send us the Rivista Ligure, a respectable magazine, from Genoa; La Démocratie Pacifique, a bright daily paper, from Paris; the Deutsche Schnellpost, the German New York paper; and Phalanx from London; the New Englander from New Haven, which angrily affirms that the Dial is not as good as the Bible. By all these signs we infer that we make some figure in the literary world, though we are not yet encouraged by a swollen subscription list. Lidian says she will write you a note herself. If, as we have heard, you will come home to Thanksgiving, you must bring something that will serve for Lyceum lecture, — the craving, thankless town! 

11. The present W. M. Evarts, lately Senator from New York, a cousin of Miss Hoar. - back
12. This inkstand was presented by Miss Hoar, with a note dated “Boston, May 2, 1843,” which deserves to be copied. 

    DEAR HENRY, — The rain prevented me from seeing you the night before I came away, to leave with you a parting assurance of good will and good hope. We have become better acquainted within the two past years than in our whole life as schoolmates and neighbors before; and I am unwilling to let you go away without telling you that I, among your other friends, shall miss you much, and follow you with remembrance and all best wishes and con fidence. Will you take this little inkstand and try if it will carry ink safely from Concord to Staten Island? and the pen, which, if you can write with steel, may be made sometimes the interpreter of friendly thoughts to those whom you leave beyond the reach of your voice, — or record the inspirations of Nature, who, I doubt not, will be as faithful to you who trust her in the sea-girt Staten Island as in Concord woods and meadows. Good-by, and [Greek text], which, a wise man says, is the only salutation fit for the wise. 
Truly your friend, E. HOAR.
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